One of the activities that Tick The Box has been engaged in over the years has been investing in the collection and registration of domain names which may at some point be relevant to the business. Some of these names are now available For Sale – see list below:-

If you drive a van nobody pays any attention. If you drive a van and you are old, you are totally invisible. We have a van. . . . .and we are old. The vehicle itself is nearly sixteen years old and as it has a Teutonic pedigree is good for many more. It is not so much a workhorse, more a family pet. In the drive to diesel in recent decades it was a rarity. . . a petrol van. Oh, the shame ! But the benefits were considerable, with little smell, even less noise and performance that a diesel van could only imagine in its wildest dreams. Just show her the open road…..

Many years ago I received a greetings card depicting a small dog in an ostensibly empty room with bare floorboards and a single shade-free lamp hanging from the ceiling. In a thought bubble above the dog’s head was a picture of a fairytale palace.

We have come across many people like that dog who live in properties eligible for a GBLU(Great British Lash Up) award, who will say, almost apologetically, ‘But it’s very nice inside.’

What do people REALLY want from a property? A Sea View perhaps, even though it may just be a grey smudge on a very distant horizon.

I will declare an interest here – we live in a converted stable in the middle of a town. They call them ‘mews cottages’. With a little imagination you can still hear the horses moving around. And smell them ! But then nobody asked the horses if they minded if we moved into their pad. So here we are almost two hundred years later.

Due to the bitter weather we have been indulging in the British national obsession with TV based property programmes.

Our viewing led us to the following conclusions. Excluding new-build houses, which are of no interest to us, the remainder were split into three types:-

Houses which retained their design both inside and out. These were a minority.

Houses which had been altered and extended (oh how the British love their extensions) and had ended up as The Great British Lash-Up. Most of these were unsellable.

The last category were barn conversions which in this day and age are few and far between, with the result that most so-called ‘barn conversions’ are actually former cowsheds, stables, pigsties and in fact any agricultural building which could be converted for human habitation.